Mark A. Rayner's Blog: Mark A. Rayner's Goodreads Blog, page 98

Making history fun!

Of course, there could be a downside to this too…

Alltop loves to play bingo! (But who doesn't?)

Celebrating six years of The Skwib with free stuff

In celebration of this event, The Skwib's giftmonkey offers you a free copy of The Amadeus Net, a chance to win a Kindle, and yesterday's un-flung poop.

The Skwib is officially six years old! The first entry in this archive begins in May 2005, and I'm celebrating with free stuff.

As you may know, in addition to writing this blog, I also pen novels of a satirical and absurd nature; in fact, I started the blog as a way to let people know about my books, but I've found The Skwib is its own reward. I hope you feel so too! So to celebrate, I'm got a couple of giveaways to share. You can get my first novel for free, and you have a great chance to win a Kindle eReader too!

My first novel, The Amadeus Net, is a futuristic satire that asks the obvious question, would an immortal Mozart have his own "sprouter" snipped off? Do sentient cities fall in love? Find out more at The Amadeus Net, and if you're already ready to read it, you can go download the PDF for free (until May 31), courtesy of my publisher ENC Press.

And if you're already sold on the whole e-book thing, then you may be itching to get a Kindle. If you buy my second book, Marvellous Hairy, you'll have a great chance to win a Kindle Wifi (the $139 version) in a draw. All you have to do is buy the Kindle edition (or paperback), and then forward your purchase confirmation to me at marvellouskindle-at-gmail (dot) com. One-in-75 wins! (If you already have a Kindle, there's a draw for Skins too. And Canadian and UK orders also count!)

The full details and contest rules are listed here.

You can also get entered in the draw by signing up for my newsletter, The MonkeySphere, or liking my Facebook page. When the latter reaches 2,000, I'm giving away a Kindle to one lucky reader. (And if you're already signed up, you're already entered.)

On a personal note, if you've enjoyed The Skwib over the years, I'd like to thank you for your time!

And I'd appreciate it if you gave one or both of my novels a try too. I guarantee, they're MUCH better than the dreck I've been slinging around here:

And now, a picture of a monkey, wearing a hat, riding a goat. Caution, your head may explode from the awesome:

Alltop wouldn't be what it is today without The Skwib. Awesome chimp shot by Riley and Amos.

Women make 80 percent of purchasing decisions …

And there IS a downside:

Woo!

Alltop wonders what advertising asexual aggregators get.

Ask General Kang: How do you beat high gas prices?

I have never owned one of your quaint "internal combustion engine" vehicles, so I have not had to worry about the high price of gas, but I have been getting nailed on the cost of most foods appropriate for the Thringian Keg-Beast that I ride to work every day.

On my home planet, I fed my Keg-Beast leftover hyper-bananas from the über-chimp orgy the night before, but since I've been on Earth, there has been a dearth of both hyper-bananas (apparently they won't grow in your frigid Earth climate) and über-chimp swinging events (this explains why I am so cranky). So, I've found alternatives; the Keg-Beast works best on a mixture of corn syrup, mescaline and the sweat of writers living in a state of quiet despair. Most of those elements are plentiful and relatively cheap, but do you have any idea how costly corn syrup is?

You humans are stupid! You're burning fossil fuels to grow corn, which you turn into ethanol to burn along with your fossil fuels. Why don't you just cut out the middle-man and take a flamethrower to your cornfields when they're ripe? You will lose only a fraction of the energy value and most of the vegetable matter will end up adding to global warming. As an added bonus: big fire!

Then your planet will be able to grow hyper-bananas, and all will be well.

… Assuming we can get a few female über-chimps down here too.

Next time: I'm trapped in the Andromeda galaxy because my hyper-drive engine is asking for a better benefits package — how do it get it back to work without giving it full dental?
Alltop would try this, but it's allergic to bananas.

Keeping things in perspective

Sometimes, life can seem overwhelming, or trivial.

In either case, this presentation on the scale of the universe, from largest to smallest, may help. [You may want to turn your sound down a bit.]

And if that doesn't blow your mind, here is a photo of monkeys drawn on a banana:

Run, the economy is angry!

I imagine the economy is a humongous nerd named Judhearst, and his hobby is making economists look like idiots (and collecting Star Trek memorabilia). He gets very angry when you make fun of the latter, and will sick his rabid dog, IMF, on you.

Alltop used to be a humongous nerd, but then The Skwib joined its feed.

Ask General Kang: Will you vote in the Canadian federal election today?

I find this democratic process of yours quaint and charming, so yes, I'll be voting. It's hard to believe I've been on this magnificent blue ball (which you are ruining by the way) long enough to receive citizenship, but I have.

Funnily enough, I started out in politics.

My own home planet, Neecknaw, once had a system of government similar to the "representative" democracies of your Earth nations. So before I became an overlord, I was elected Prime Primate.

Now, winning an election is not an easy thing to do (unless you're Jean Chretien), but I managed through a combination of inspiring oratory, good organization, and the secretions of the Pfluugen Slug from Planet Muguulgar. (This colorless and odorless liquid is quite powerful, and renders imbibers of it very suggestible. Okay, it makes them your willing slaves, but only if you know how much to use and what to say afterward.)

Oh, I can see what you are thinking: how could he possible give that every voter? I didn't have to. I only had to slip a little bit in to reporters' drinks at the Press Club. Now clearly, this subterfuge would never work here in Canada, in this post-journalism era. I suspect that even if I drugged the pollsters and forced them to reveal I was far ahead, that would not work.

If find your Canadian electorates' ability to do its own thing quite disturbing. (Not as disturbing as Stephen Harper finds it, I'm sure, but still.)

But don't worry, eventually I'll get a new armada and a few brigades of uber-chimps armed with slide whistles and plasma rifles, and then I'll sort it all out!

Next time: I'm building a Moon of Destruction, and I'm working out some of the details. How small do the exhaust ports have to be to prevent teenagers from blowing it up with a single plasma bolt?
Alltop is outraged that Mark just stole that joke from Robot Chicken.

The issue of social media fines: an open letter to Elections Canada

Dear Elections Canada,

This is a typical Canadian,
voting without the benefits
of time travel.

First of all, thank you for doing this job! I imagine it is somewhat of a thankless task, and I for one appreciate being able to vote, even though Stephen Harper tells me I shouldn't want to. I certainly don't begrudge you the hard-earned tax dollars that helps pay your salaries. (Unlike the loonies that got flushed for the G-20 summit.)

I understand that as "an independent, non-partisan agency that reports directly to Parliament" you can't do much about the elections act, and the fact that a portion of the act prevents the "premature transmission" of election results across time zones. Obviously, this "transmission" could be done by CTV, CBC, hack newspapers, and, of course, individuals using Twitter. So, your threat that anyone announcing results could be fined $25,000 and suffer a thorough noodle-lashing is perfectly reasonable. You're just upholding the law.

A thought occurs: a thorough implementation of this policy may be an excellent way to deal with the massive budget deficit the previous (Conservative) government has left us. In fact, if only 1.2 million Canadians say something about the election results before all the polls are closed, that should cover the $30 billion deficit. (16 million Canadians are on Facebook, more than 300,000 are on Twitter – and many of those will be repeat retweeting offenders – this seems like a reasonable proposition.)

On the other hand, you, like others, may feel this is an excessive response to what may be an innocent mistake. (Not every slack-jawed Facebook user is an Elections Canada Act aficionado, like your correspondent, who has a special drool-wiping gnome to help him with his slack-jawed Facebook use.)

The answer to this issue is so obvious. I'm surprised it evaded you.

Change the time zones.

All you need to do is pick a Canadian Standard Time. Voila. If we all live in the same time zone, there will be no likelihood of Canadians (innocent and not-so) contravening the act and using their social media to tell their distant relatives and friends what is happening where they live. Granted, it may prove inconvenient to have the sun rise at 5 am in Halifax and 10 am in Vancouver, but we all must learn to make sacrifices. (Except in Toronto. Never there.)

Another (more radical) solution may require some research. My understanding is that time travel is theoretically possible. Perhaps we could somehow move populations through time so that no-one has to experience the horror of knowing what other parts of the country have done before them. Obviously, there will be some expense to this. But we can make it affordable by moving populations based on size and location. Once again, this proposal will mean that nothing will interfere with people living in Toronto – or Montreal and Ottawa (also important) – and their daily activities. Besides, people who live on the coasts should be willing to work with the inconvenience, because they've got all those positive ions helping them keep healthy and be happy anyway.

A third (extremely radical) idea, is that you could only release the poll results once all the votes have been counted. This would mean no time travel, nor subjugating the entire country to the diurnal dictates of one time zone (Toronto-time, we could call it), but it may work. You would have to count all the votes, and only release them to the media (and slack-jawed Facebook users, with and without gnome helpers) when ALL the results are in.

Of course, that would mean that people in Toronto would have to go to bed before they knew the results of the election.

Scratch that. Ignore that last idea. Crazy talk.

Yours (in) sincerity,

Mark

A Brief History of Unicorns: Horny Greeks

Take a moment to think about some of your favorite Greek myths. Did Bellerephon ride a unicorn? No, he rode Perseus, the obviously fake winged horse. When Heracles (Hercules) was assigned the labor of cleaning the Augean Stables, were they filled with unicorns? No, the stables were filled with a 1,000 immortal cattle (and heroic defecators these cows were), thus ensuring an infinitely humiliating job. (Though Heracles spoiled the fun by rerouting a river through the stables.)

In the vast wine-colored sea of rosy-fingered Greek myth, unicorns do not appear. Why? Because they existed, and Greek scholars wrote about them in their natural histories instead.

The Greeks (correctly) identified the origin of the unicorn in India, and described them as a kind of "fleet-footed ass with a horn a cubit long". Ctesias said in his history of India, Indica, the unicorn was "fleet as the Western wind and as beautiful as a doe-eyed Athenian boy." Aristotle thought the unicorn was the "most intelligent beast on the earth, save man," while the philosopher Bungosias said the unicorn was "impossible to capture alive without the aid of a willing and guileful virgin, of which there are few in Hellas."

Hunters had also been unable to bring down a unicorn with the use of stone- or bronze-tipped arrows, and it was not until the advent of iron that humans in Europe were able to kill the canny creatures. (The method that ancient Vedic cultures used to kill unicorns is lost to history, but the Greek loony historian, Kookooplas, suggested that ancient Indians had a surplus of female virgins, which were used to lure unicorns into a variety of clever traps.) Many philosophers engaged hunters to kill unicorns so they could be studied.

Though he is best known for his advances in mathematics, Pythagoras was also a believer in metempsychosis, or reincarnation. He thought it possible that human souls could be reborn in "higher animals" and naturally, as the most intelligent animal, unicorns would be an ideal receptacle for human sapience. Thus, Pythagoras thought it immoral to kill a unicorn, and formed an advocacy group, Philosophers for Honorable Unicorn Devotion (PHUD), to stop the slaughter.

Pythagoras apparently wrote a long treatise about the beasts called Unicornica; no doubt this was burned by disfigured and prurient monks in the dark ages. However, in one of Xenophanes' surviving writings he spoke of Pythagoras' belief:

"Pythagoras insists the Unicorns are intelligent and can speak in their fashion, communicating with flowers of differing color and species as we use the alphabet to form words. He has told them to leave our Hellas or to risk being hunted into extinction for their remarkable organs, and tasty, tasty flesh. That is why his PHUD-men wear the horn on their foreheads."

This latter point is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Pythagorian unicorn worship, and explains the coin pictured above. Xenophanes then goes on to tell a rather boring story about attending a dinner party in which unicorn was served according to an ancient Vedic recipe.

And so it was the unicorns were driven further west, attempting to find someplace where they would be safe from the predatory humans. But word was out in Europe of their general deliciousness, and unicorns would not be safe again until the Middle Ages.

A Brief History of Unicorns

Part One: Getting Biblical

Part Two: Vedic Culinary Prescirptions

Part Three: The Golden Age of Unicorns

Part Four: Horny Greeks

Alltop is always horny, but it has nothing to do with unicorns. Pic via Wikipedia.

I'm Thor!

Love this!

You may also like to check out my short story, "Rebranding Thor", in Defenestration.

Alltop is sore too.